Speed up boot time in Car PC

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robert422

n00b
Joined
Oct 1, 2004
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33
I got a useless 466mhz Gateway Profile PC and I decided to use is as a car pc since it has the LCD and DC power input. I have the computer working well in the car. I have it autoloading winamp playlist and I have an ATI controller to change tracks and playlists. The pc boots, starts playing playlists and everything sounds good. However, it takes a little over a minute before the music starts playing.
I could do standby mode, but I don't drive my car every day and standby would drain my car battery. I am looking for the fastest boot time that will load only USB, my controller drivers, monitor, and audio drivers and winamp. I'm currently running windows 98 on the machine, but I am sure 98 isn't the fastest. Any suggestions to what the fastest booting OS would be? I could try other windows OS, or Linux, or whatever. And whatever OS, how should I go about disableing all the unneeded services and programs and what all should I disable?
 
Windows ME booted very quickly on my older machine. Then again, it's probably one of the most hated Windows in existence, so you might want to stay away from it for other reasons.
 
Dos boots incredibly fast and it doesn't require any sort of software shutdown procedure. That's what I used on my car computer back when I had it set up. The toughest part is probably finding a dos driver for the soundcard. I just used an old isa soundblaster so that wasn't really a problem for me. Also look into optimizing your bios settings. Disable any kind of drive autodetecting; set up your hard drive in the bios. Turn off floppy seek. Turn off memory checks. Turn off bios entry prompt. Your computer might not have all those options, but it's certainly a good place to start.
 
My car pc is a 233 pentium pro running win 2k. I build this comp out of spare parts about 5 yrs ago to play mp3s in my truck and i tinker with it every so often. Winamp is controlled by a modified ps2 keyboard (looks like a tv remote control) It boots in about 30 to 40 seconds. I turned off as much stuff in the bios that wasn't need such as memory check etc. In windows i turned off all unneccessary or bullshit services and put only what was needed in the startup folder (winamp). The bios seems to take the longest to initialize. Windows boots pretty quick.
 
I'm sure you could find an ultra-light linux build that is set up just to play mp3s. Windows is always going to have a bunch of services that run.

The main issue is going to be finding the Remote Wonder drivers for Linux.

edit: here's a guide I found, for using the remote in Linux: link.
 
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